Rethinking youth sports - cooperative games; includes related article on using the research - Research Update

Parks & Recreation, Dec, 1997 by Georgianna Ramsey, Bryan Rank

In today's society, aggressive behavior and violence are not uncommon in many families, communities, schools, media outlets and places of business. We all pay a high price for this violence in human terms, as well as increased costs for attempts at prevention and intervention. Youth sports has traditionally been viewed as an avenue for channeling negative aggressive behavior into a positive, constructive direction. However, with the decline of sportsmanship and fair play and the increased emphasis upon aggressive, win-at-all-costs behaviors in sports, some question the value of youth sport participation. Does this participation, in fact, promote and encourage aggressive behavior and violence in our youth? We recommend there is a need for a different way for our youth to visualize and participate in sports and games.

There is a need to defocus high levels of competitiveness and aggressive behavior that are currently encouraged and supported in youth sports. For this change in focus to occur, youngsters, parents, and coaches need an alternative. We suggest cooperative games.

Cooperative games create situations in which success in a skill-perceived task (an activity or a game) is determined by a joint or cooperative effort toward some goal in which there is a common interest. The reward is not attainable by working alone or against one another. Emphasis is placed upon the process and not the outcome of the game or activity.

In contrast, competitive games contain situations in which success in a skill-perceived task is determined by performing better than one's opponent, rather than a cooperative effort, where one team or individual wins and the other team(s) or individual(s) does not. Emphasis is placed upon the outcome of the game or activity, not the process.

Cooperative play, when introduced at an early age, can provide an alternative to the aggressive behavior and violence that can be associated with youth sports. Aggressive, non-sharing, noncooperative, non-caring, and non-helping behaviors have been connected with strictly competitive play being taught to young children. According to Kohn (1992), competitive games can "encourage" aggressive behavior. For example, in a competitive game of hockey, players are told to hit hard and be violent in order to win.

Through youth sports, children are taught to compete against one another, sometimes ruthlessly, where only a few can achieve success. It appears that play has been lost, implying that fun has also been lost. Orlick (1978) explains:

Children are encouraged to delight in others' failures . . . Exposing young children to irrational competition does not teach them how to compete in a healthy manner; it merely pressures them into competition. As children grow older, they have been so conditioned to the importance of winning that they can no longer play for fun or enjoyment (p. 27).

Children learn how to compete in ways that foster unfriendly competition. According to Orlick, children have lost a sense of helping others and may leave competitive games with a feeling of having failed.

America has an obsessive passion with competition. The genesis of this obsession is difficult to pinpoint. Nevertheless, competition has created a nation of children who grow up without knowing how to play and enjoy pure fun. According to Ellis (1973), play is stimulus-seeking behavior. Kraus (1990) states that play is self-motivated and for intrinsic purposes. Children look for ways to have fun and obtain pleasure through play, and most games taught to children by adults are competitive, not cooperative. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, several individuals (Stewart Brand, Pat Farrington, Terry Orlick, and Andrew Fluegelman) experimented with a different approach to competition, a radical departure from traditional views. This approach became known as the New Games Movement, which spiraled into a decade of rethinking how people play.

New Games Movement

A Vietnam veteran, Stewart Brand, who was inspired by the protests of war and its conflicting views, initiated the New Games Movement. Brand designed a game known as "Slaughter," a form of "soft war" that was intense and competitive, but stressed fun and play for the sake of play (Fluegelman, 1976).

From Brand's original thought of helping people find a connection between war and play, others began to add and separate from his original idea. Pat Farrington proposed an ideology toward play that included trust and cooperation. She believed that play should instill a sense of community by allowing individuals to express themselves in recreation. Farrington explained that "games are not so much a way to compare our abilities as a way to celebrate them" (Fluegelman, 1976).

In 1973, on a large, grassy, plot outside of San Francisco, the first of many New Games tournaments began. The New Games tournaments were a starting point and testing ground for the ideology that people can play for the sake of play with fun as the main emphasis. According to Fluegelman (1981), the games evolved into a whole new way of looking at play. As new games were developed and existing games revised, challenge and cooperation were emphasized along with noncompetitiveness. The New Games Movement served as a catalyst to a new age of thought for children and the education that was being provided, especially in the realm of play.